Court affirms appeal denial for man who shot wife, lover in Clinton

The Court of Criminal Appeals has affirmed the denial of a post-conviction relief appeal for convicted murderer Phillip Douglas Seals.

by Beverly Majors

The Court of Criminal Appeals has affirmed the denial of a post-conviction relief appeal for convicted murderer Phillip Douglas Seals.

Seals was convicted of first-degree murder in 2006 in the 2005 shooting deaths of his estranged wife, Misty Dawn Seals, and her lover, Mark Adam Newton, at his wife’s Willow Run apartment in Clinton.

Seals was sentenced to two concurrent life sentences after a jury found him guilty of felony murder. That conviction came after four days of testimony in Criminal Court at the Anderson County Courthouse.

He is serving his sentence at the Turney Center Industrial Complex, a medium security prison in Hickman County.

Seals’ convictions were affirmed on direct appeal and the Tennessee Supreme Court denied his application for permission to appeal. He filed for post-conviction relief after being denied a new trial but the high court denied relief.

His latest appeal is to appeal the post-conviction court’s denial of his petition.

Seals shot his 29-year-old estranged wife, Misty Seals, four times and 42-year-old Newton five times — four in the back. They were shot while in bed together, where Seals found them after kicking in the bedroom door.

He testified he shot them with a gun he found at the foot of the bed that he picked up when he saw them in bed.

Seals fled the apartment after the shootings, stopped at a gas station to call 911 and threw the gun off Norris Dam.

He testified he called 911 so the couple's children wouldn’t return home and find their mother and Newton.

The couple’s two children were teenagers — 18 and 14 — at the time of the trial.